$5 billion for fascists; cuts at home.

Updated 6:27 pm, Tuesday, April 22, 2014

It's remarkable how the United States spends massive amounts of money on war, terrorism and fomenting coups at the same time politicians and pundits insist there's no money for successful, much-needed domestic programs.

Just since 2002, the U.S. has spent trillions waging war on Iraq and Afghanistan, with no end in sight to the spending or the misery of those two countries. At the same time, unemployment insurance, veterans' benefits and other programs get shredded because "there's no money."

Meanwhile, tensions flare in the Ukraine and Venezuela largely because of vast sums the U.S. has funneled to counter-revolutionaries. Corporate flacks like President Obama and Fox News are united in insisting that U.S. imperialism has the right to interfere in or invade any country it wants, whenever it wants, without having to answer or be held accountable to anyone.

Noble talk of "democracy promotion" is a cover for opposition to democracy and is especially devious regarding Venezuela, which has democratic structures that exceed anything we have here. As people in the global South know all too well from a long and bloody history, profits of corporations and the destruction of any movement or state that dares challenge empire are the real objectives of U.S. foreign policy.

The CIA, USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy and other institutions of imperial power have given millions of dollars to Venezuelan elites seeking to overthrow the popularly elected government. In 2002, reactionary forces used that aid to depose the late Hugo Chavez until the people repelled the coup plotters.

In the years since, the Bolivarian Revolution has grown stronger and those who wish to return to the days when a small oligarchy enjoyed great wealth, while the majority lived in squalor, have been rebuffed again and again. Because of Venezuela's oil reserves as well as the hope that the revolution inspires elsewhere, however, the U.S. fights on, fomenting sabotage and violence in the hopes of succeeding where it failed in 2002. Throughout the current crisis, the U.S. has talked incessantly about violence by the Venezuelan government, conveniently leaving out that the reactionaries are responsible for most of the killing, including decapitations.

Meanwhile, the U.S. invested $5 billion to overthrow the Ukrainian government of now-deposed president Viktor Yanukovych, according to Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, because he rejected the European Union and instead established closer ties with Russia several years after also refusing to join NATO.

Given the destruction the EU and the West in general have wrought in Greece, Cyprus and throughout Eastern Europe, while outside investors earned billions in profits, that was a perfectly reasonable decision. Needless to say, the West's business class was not pleased so Yanukovych was overthrown.

The Ukrainian people had many legitimate grievances against the Super Rich Yanukovych represented and it's possible a genuine movement for greater freedom and a fair economy might have succeeded. That possibility evaporated, however, as fascists hijacked the protests, and it was the fascist cause that the five billion from the U.S. aided. And make no mistake, the parliamentary party Svoboda and the street thugs of the Right Sector -- those John McCain pal around with, those Obama and the punditocracy hail as "democrats," those driving events even if they aren't a majority -- proudly declare themselves ultra-nationalist supremacists in the tradition of World War IIcollaborators who helped the Nazis kill three million Ukrainians, and they have nothing but contempt for democracy.

One of the West's goals is virtually assured, as the new Ukrainian government will undoubtedly surrender to the EU. Another objective is the further encirclement of Russia with military bases, a continuation of a policy of aggression dating to the U.S.-led invasion of the USSR shortly after the 1917 Revolution. NATO now includes virtually all of the countries of the old Eastern bloc, in violation of agreements made 25 years ago with Mikhail Gorbachev, and is central to the U.S.'s determination to isolate and possibly destroy Russia, just as the West has destroyed Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya and is seeking to destroy Syria and Iran. Last but far from least are the interests of Chevron, Cargill, Monsanto and other corporate vultures salivating at the profits to be made from pillaging yet another country.

Lost amidst venomous jingoism from the likes of Hilary Clinton is the fact that Russia was invaded three times by the West in the 20th century, with a cost of 25 million lives. Vladimir Putin is an autocratic criminal but his response to the West's coup in the Ukraine must be understood in the context of those invasions and dead. Furthermore, Putin's diplomacy was key in preventing the U.S. from invading Syria, and he made similar overtures that might have prevented the current Ukrainian crisis -- overtures Obama rejected. Rather than demonizing Putin and threatening more violence, the U.S. and EU should re-visit those proposals.

In the meantime, the next time you hear a senator or MSNBC gasbag babbling about how there's no money for food stamps, remember the trillions spent on weapons of war. Remember, too, that those who run this country have no problem blowing up children in Afghanistan at the same time millions of children here are malnourished, then ponder what that says about their priorities and the tasks facing the rest of us.